Adventures in Vertigo

On Tuesday night, for no discernible reason, my head started feeling spinny.

And as time passed, it got worse and worse.

Now, let me just say, when I was a kid I used to stand in the middle of the living room and twirl around and around because I enjoyed the little rush of dizziness I got in my head when I stopped.  I know dizziness, folks, and this...was not it.  This was magnitudes beyond.  It felt like the actual floor was jerking from side to side at unpredictable intervals.  I kept randomly lurching and having to catch my balance.

And then...I checked my email and saw that I'd gotten a new Artfire order!  I stumbled wonkily out to the living room to tell The Boy the good news.

This is an exaggeration.  But I did flail and ALMOST fall over.

Packing that order was...difficult.  But I managed.  It helped to stay seated and keep my head perfectly immobile.

By the end of the night, the vertigo had reached truly epic proportions.  I've never experienced anything like it.  Any movement of my head, no matter how small, made the room swing wildly around me.  When I lay down in bed to go to sleep, the mattress felt like it was pitching violently up and down like a mechanical bull and I clung to The Boy in abject terror for a good five minutes, waiting for it to pass.

He is remarkably solid and reassuring for one so dainty.

The next morning, the spinny feeling seemed to have spread from my head and into my eyes as well - the harder I tried to focus on anything, the more swimmy it became.  It felt as though my eyeballs were twirling in opposite directions...and the floor was still randomly jolting under my feet.

And there was still that order to mail out.

I considered waiting another day to go to the post office.  Maybe I'd feel better by then.  But - and this was a terrifying thought - what if I felt worse? Like, so bad that I couldn't even stand up?  I couldn't take the chance of keeping my customer waiting.

So, I went.

The sidewalk felt like one of those bouncy-houses you can rent for kids' parties, and I was staggering like a drunk, but I got that package mailed in a timely fashion.  And I didn't crack my head open on the sidewalk or get hit by a car!  I arrived home radiant with triumph and nauseous with motion sickness, and immediately fell asleep for five straight hours.

Today, the ground feels solid again...but so do my sinuses.  I'm guessing the whole vertigo thing was a rather baroque first stage of a cold or flu.  I'm gonna spend the next few days sleeping a lot and see if that helps.

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Have you been to my Artfire store yet?  I've recently listed an adorable (and arboreal!) tribute to Bob Ross.  Happy!  Little!  Trees!